The anti-terrorism court’s inability to convict police officers for the extrajudicial killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud points towards Pakistan’s diseased criminal justice system. It is also a reiteration of the state’s deliberate policy to persecute Pashtuns, who have dared to organise themselves for peace under the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM).
While Imran Khan’s administration colluded with the establishment to target the PTM and allies from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and elsewhere, the incumbents have proved to be a version of the same.
Rao Anwar, former senior superintendent police Malir, and 17 others indicted in March 2022 for Naqeebullah Mehsud’s murder were acquitted by an anti-terrorism court in Karachi on January 23, 2023. Anwar had falsely accused Naqeebullah of affiliation with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — a claim later refuted by the militant outfit.
Naqeebullah’s extrajudicial murder on January 13, 2018 brought Pashtuns of Pakistan from the conflict and militancy-affected KP together on an unprecedented scale. The courts and police have succeeded in trampling rights of constituents of NA-50 by keeping their MNA Ali Wazir under arrest on criminal charges.
It’s a horrifying fact that political and human rights activists of KP are stuck between the newly resurgent militants —of good and bad variety— and the security forces. In June 2022, four young activists with diverse political affiliations were gunned down in North Waziristan. Over the course of the past year, the law enforcement authorities penalised citizens marching for peace and demanding an end to conflict and protection from terrorism.
Since its inception in February 2018, the PTM and its allies have been forcibly disappeared, arbitrarily detained, thrashed during peaceful assembly, extra-judicially killed, put under surveillance, harassed and judicially persecuted. Essentially, their sentiment that ‘Nothing has changed for us’ stands true since the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) took charge in Pakistan in April 9, 2022.
“It is a joke that due process was never followed for putting my name on the schedule list. No evidence recommending my name being placed on any such list by the relevant authorities was submitted in the court,” says Nangyal.
One group of the PTM activists chose to align more formally with the state through formulation of the new political party in KP, the National Democratic Movement. The party decided to enter the ruling coalition in April last year. Abdullah Nangyal, formerly associated with the PTM, was barred from boarding an international flight in July 2022. He was told it was because he was on the fourth schedule and a proscribed individual under the Anti Terrorism Act, 1997.
Nangyal was arbitrarily detained, arrested, remanded and implicated in a string of false FIRs in the past four years. He presently faces four cases, including one on sedition, with its next hearing scheduled for January 28, 2023. “It is a joke that due process was never followed for putting my name on the schedule list. No evidence recommending my name being placed on any such list by the relevant authorities was submitted in the court. My counsel has been asking for an official record, but supposedly the order came from the above”, he says. His name was placed on the fourth schedule in 2021.
Nangyal’s continued status as a 4th scheduler is bizarre. In August 2022, he was included in a jirga constituted on ex-PM Nawaz Sharif’s order to work towards restoration of “peace, law and order situation” in Miran Shah and Mir Ali in the former tribal areas. The directive was signed by the then Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, and Nangyal was 9th in the list of 16 members.
How can a “proscribed person” be in a jirga advocating for peace? What does it take to remove a political activist who advocates for rights?
An FIR against Pashtun defenders was registered in Chaman on January 25, which declares sloganeering for Ali Wazir’s release and criticising the “uniform” an act of sedition.
The PTM, in its current form, has multiple members on the 4th schedule. Though the interior ministry could get PML-N leaders, like Maryam Nawaz, removed from the exit control list, it could not get MNA Mohsin Dawar, who is on a no-fly list, and Nangyal, who is confronted with court delays, off the list.
Since the beginning of the Sharif administration, the law enforcement agencies have slapped a spate of FIRs on the founding members of the PTM who did not ally with a political party. At least 13 FIRs, nominating different leaders and supporters of the PTM, have been registered, including two in January 2023. This translates into 13 more court cases, rush to get anticipatory bails, financial burden via surety bonds, repeated appearances in relevant courts while the judges, prosecution and investigative authorities continue to delay hearings.
Of these FIRs, eight include Section 124-A — the colonial era law of sedition, currently in the news due to the arrest of the PTI’s Fawad Chaudhry. One police case of sedition from January 1, 2023 named Manzoor Pashteen, but the development did not make it to the news cycle. One FIR is of violation of the fourth schedule by an HRD, and rest of the 12 have a recurring allegation of incitement and violent intent, primarily due to the rights movement supporters calling the generals behind the conflict of their region.
An FIR against Pashtun defenders was registered in Chaman on January 25, which declares sloganeering for Ali Wazir’s release and criticising the “uniform” an act of sedition. Rights to peaceful assembly and expression are essential to marginalised groups, and specifically to those like the PTM whom the state authorities, with all their might, have maligned through fabrications in legal procedures and use of draconian laws.
The PDM continues to criminalise freedom which are essential components of democracy, and is failing to prove ethical superiority over the hybrid regime of its predecessors.
